Election Day: What’s at Stake

Aug 7, 2018

RUSH: The panting and the salivating and the tongues on the sidewalk, you cannot escape ’em. The Drive-By Media desperately hoping, salivating, panting that this Ohio special election today, the Trump-endorsed candidate, loses, quite naturally is what they hope. And they’re making bold predictions, and they’re saying, “If Trump’s endorsed candidate loses, it validates everything we’ve been saying about the country hating Trump.”

Greetings, my friends, and welcome. Rush Limbaugh. A lot to do today on the EIB Network, including, how about this headline: “Beer Made From The Vaginal Lactic Acid Of Hot Models Finally Goes On Sale.” That story is coming up later on the EIB Network. And I did not make that up. That is from… what’s the website? Washington Examiner. Daily Wire. Exactly.

Anyway, we’re talking about Ohio 12. This is why Trump went into Ohio on Saturday to Lewis Center to do a rally. I want to give you a little bit of information on this election, who the combatants are, some of the history of this particular district, and what is on the line here. It’s a special election, and no matter the outcome of this election, it’s gonna be held again in November. This is simply to fill out the remaining months of a term of a retiring Republican.

But the Drive-By Media has devoted pretty much everything they’ve got into this election. Some others today, too, of course. There are five different big elections going on, five states having elections today. But Ohio 12 is where the Drive-Bys are focused because they are so convinced that Troy Balderson’s gonna lose this. That’s the Trump-endorsed candidate. They just can’t wait.

This seat, Kasich had this seat for 18 years, nine terms. It’s been in Republican hands for 36 years, essentially. And they’re just looking for a flip here. It’s a solid Republican district. And if the Democrats can win this one today, you will not stop hearing about what it means for the midterms, the blue wave and 2020. Thirty-five years this district, Ohio 12, has been held by Republicans.

The Republican retiring is Patrick Tiberi. He’s decided to leave early like a number of House Republicans are. Some of them are leaving because they’re chairmen of committees and they’re term-limited. They can’t serve as chairmen anymore. They don’t want to go back to being just regular rank-and-file members, and so they are retiring. They are getting out of there.

And it’s creating a lot of seats that the Republicans have to hold. It’s one of the reasons why the Drive-Bys and the political scientists and consultants have been suggesting the Republicans are gonna lose the House, because so many solid incumbents are leaving.

And that’s another thing. They’ve been telling us that these solid incumbents are leaving ’cause they hate Trump. These Republicans can’t stand Trump. They’re embarrassed of Trump. They’re embarrassed to be Republicans. They’re embarrassed to be in the House. They can’t wait to get out of there.

That’s a load of bull. It’s simply their chairmanships, in most cases, have been term-limited, and it’s like a CEO being told he’s going back to the mail room. He doesn’t want to go back to the mail room. He wouldn’t go back to the mail room. And these guys don’t want to go back to being back-benchers after having been chairmen of powerful committees.

The Democrat nominee, the Democrat candidate in this race is named Danny O’Connor. He is, I think, 31 years old. The Drive-Bys are talking about how great he looks, he young, he’s vibrant, he’s exactly what the future of the Democrat Party is, and that probably isn’t the case, but more on that in just a moment.

Now, the Republicans have held this seat since 1983. The party and relative conservative political action committees have spent more than $4 million to stop what is being called a Democrat surge here. The Democrats have spent less than a million on this race. Saturday Trump went in to do a rally to stump for Troy Balderson. And the candidate said he would win if Trump supporters put in the work and get-out-the-vote. The winner of the race today is just gonna serve out the term of Tiberi, and both O’Connor and Balderson will face off again in November.

Regardless the outcome of today’s election, it will happen again in November with these same two guys. That aspect of this is not getting a lot of press, because the Drive-Bys want this to be set up with O’Connor winning and that’s gonna be it, that will be the last thing you hear about it, “Democrats take the seat” will be the news, “Trump on the way out,” “Republicans rejecting Trump.”

You know the drill. Everybody embarrassed of Trump. This is the beginning of the blue wave. That’s what they’ve got invested in this outcome today. Here’s another little wrinkle. There has been early voting in this district, and it says in all that I’ve been able to find about this that both parties agree that the Democrats won the early vote. They turned in more absentee ballots than Republicans did in a district where the president’s party has usually begun with a lead.

Republicans say that they’re gonna have to overcome O’Connor’s lead in Franklin County. It’s the biggest population center. This is suburban Columbus we’re talking about here, by the way, for those of you not familiar with the districts and their numbers in Ohio. Franklin County is suburban Columbus. Troy Balderson has been leading. He’s had a two-month lead on this. In fact, up until about a month ago, his lead was 43-33 in a Monmouth University poll.

But the lead was vanishing in an Emerson poll. 43-33 a couple of months ago. When Trump showed up Saturday, that had changed to 47-46 lead for O’Connor. So statistically a dead heat. Margin of error dead heat. But if you believe the polling data, the Republican, Balderson, had a 10-point lead a couple months ago that’s now gone. And Trump went in there hopefully to reverse that and change it around.

Now, most Republican insiders expect Balderson to eke out a victory. They expect it to be close, but they think that Balderson is gonna win. One consultant said, “I still think it’s Troy Balderson’s to lose.” But they all are hedging their bets, talking about the idiosyncrasies, the special elections, and things of this nature that need to be kept in mind. So this is election day there. And we talked about this yesterday.

You know, we had the president on here last Wednesday. And I asked him specifically about his base and its relationship to the midterm elections. And he openly said, “I’m not sure. I don’t know if the support for me transfers into races where I’m not on the ballot,” such as the midterms here. What he was talking about was coattails. But it’s not really coattails ’cause he’s not on the ballot.

And so what it’s gonna boil down to is Republicans in this district and every other district realizing what’s at stake: Republican voters. It is axiomatic that the party that wins the White House loses 15 seats in the next congressional elections two years after any presidential race. That’s just statistics. It’s born out. There have been some exceptions, 2002 was one, following the Democrats meltdown when the Wellstone memorial happened.

Now, I mentioned yesterday that every effort on the part of Democrats to win the House is rooted not in getting people to vote for Democrats based on policies. It’s the most amazing thing. They’re rallying people to vote simply on one thing: hatred of Donald Trump. Not policy. Even in these local races, the Democrats are out there urging people to get out and vote because they hate Trump, not because the Democrats have any such great-shakes policies, because they don’t.

I mean, in the Old World terms of politics, the Democrats would not have a prayer here. They don’t have any policies that they can espouse. The policies that they do believe in we suffered for eight years with those policies under Barack Obama. In just a year and a half after Obama, there’s been a massive turnaround in the U.S. economy.

Political consultants argue among themselves what is the seminal issue in some of these races, and a lot of people think Trump ought to be out there really, really pounding the economy, and other people say, “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Immigration. Immigration is what turns out Trump’s base.” Why not do both? Why either/or? Why not a message that contains both?

But here’s what it boils down to, not just in Ohio 12, but in all these places. If you want the momentum of the current year and a half of the Trump presidency to continue, then you have to vote for the Republicans to hold the House, because if they lose it, the Trump agenda and the Trump presidency is gonna be ground to a screeching halt because the Democrats are gonna do nothing but oversight.

They’re gonna have committee hearings after committee hearings. They’re gonna be subpoenaing these people and that people. They’re gonna bring the Trump administration to a screeching halt. They’re not gonna be able to kick Trump out of office. They’re not gonna be able to impeach him, but they can try to bring everything to a screeching halt.

So it is of fundamental importance that each of these Republican candidates on the ballot today essentially be seen as Trump. Republicans in these districts need to look at this election as voting for Trump. Now, some people, “Rush don’t say that. That’s scary. What if people don’t like Trump?” That’s the point. They want you to think that everybody now hates Trump. They’re doing everything they can to convince you Republicans who voted for Trump to second-guess yourselves about it now.

They’ve been trying this ever since Trump won. Drive a wedge between Trump’s voters and Trump, and they’re continuing it here in this election in Ohio 12 and elsewhere. So let’s go some audio sound bites on this. We’ll start first with Trump. We’ll go back to the rally Saturday night, Lewis Center, Ohio.

THE PRESIDENT: You gotta get out and vote. You gotta get out. Did you see Pelosi? Who, by the way, again, controls Danny O’Connor — whoever the hell that is. But, you know.

CROWD: (laughing)

THE PRESIDENT: Danny O’Connor on his resume put stuff that wasn’t true, okay? So he did that. You know, you would have thought he was Perry Mason or something. He was like a low-level person that did nothing. Danny O’Connor. That’s a beauty. He’s another beauty. This is what we’re fighting. A vote for Danny boy and the Democrats is a vote to let criminals and drugs pour into our country and to let MS-13 run wild in our communities.

RUSH: Danny boy, Danny O’Connor. You know, Trump is right here. A vote for any Democrat right now is a vote for open borders, is a vote to bring to a screeching halt any serious efforts to control the border and control illegal immigration. Voting for any the Democrat is a vote to put the brakes on an expanding, roaring economy. Because in this instance, you can’t ignore policy. Even if the Democrats aren’t gonna talk about it, we have to tell people what theirs is. They’re running on one thing: Trump hatred.

They are running on the belief that everybody who voted for Trump (or a lot) regret it. They’re campaigning on the basis that a lot of people are embarrassed and want to make up for their mistake by voting against Trump any way they can. Since Trump’s not on the ballot, they gotta vote against Republicans. That’s what they’re dreaming up. What has to be exposed is what Trump did here: What are the policies we’re gonna end up with if the Democrats control the House? Not that they’ll be able to implement them right off the bat, but that’s who they are.

If they get control of the House… You know, it’s tough to get it back, and they’re gonna put the brakes on everything that’s happening that revitalizes the country, particularly after the eight years of Obama. But not just the eight years. I mean, this country was stagnating for a long time, not realizing its potential economically, culturally. We’ve been stagnating. We’ve been sort of flatlining for a long time. Trump has brought new vitality in practically every area that he has sought to implement changes.

So it’s crucial that the policies Democrats believe in — and I tell you: All you need to do is look at Facebook and Twitter and some of these other social media sites and how they’re trying to silence conservatives. We’re not talking about Democrats. We’re talking about Stalinists and fascists. We’re talking about people that want to use the power of government and the power of corporations to shut down people they don’t want to hear, people they disagree with.

We’re talking about people who will obliterate the First Amendment and do it on purpose and do it with a smile on their face and say that our democracy depends on getting rid of the First Amendment. Chris Murphy, who is a senator from Connecticut, says, “Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.” That’s what we’re voting against today!

We’re voting against people like Chris Murphy and anybody else who advocates the government and social media sites in the name of “saving democracy,” silencing voices of everybody they disagree with. They get away with this; this is just the tip of the iceberg. Do you think they wouldn’t love to shut down this program? You think they wouldn’t love to find a way to shut down Fox News? They’re not gonna stop trying. They need to be denied the power — the electoral power, the result of winning elections.

They need to be denied the ability to do this! This is not your Democrat Party of old. This is not the Democrat Party that believed in the standard, old, harmless, little argument of Big Government and giving everything away. They are so far beyond that now. They are anti-First Amendment. They are anti-freedom of speech. They are anti-specific religions and pro- others. They are all for using the power of government and their corporate alliances to literally silence people — and after they silence them, the punishment phase will come.

We’ve seen this! We’ve seen it around the world. We’ve seen how these kinds of people that believe in authoritarian, dictatorial tyranny end up. They don’t stop at one success. That just whets the appetite for more. The policies of all of these Democrats on every ballot today must be understood, must be taken into account, and they must be voted against. You have to ask yourself, “Why are the Democrats not seeking to win any election based on policy? Why is it all based on hatred for Donald Trump?”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have three more bites to go here with the president’s bite we just played. I’ll get to them after the break. I just want to remind everybody that it really is crucial here, with as much attention as the media is focusing on all of these elections — particularly the special election in Ohio 12 today. They’ve got so much invested here in demonstrating and proving that Trump’s voters are fed up with him, tired of him, embarrassed, wished they had a do-over — and they’re gonna take these elections today to make that point.

That needs to be rejected.

The president continues to desperately need a Republican majority in the House so that the implementation of this agenda to Make America Great Again can continue. It is crucially important, and I cannot emphasize enough to all of you voting today, wherever you are, to pay attention to the messages that you’re hearing in these campaigns. You’re gonna listen long and hard, and you will not hear Democrats campaigning very much on policy. You’ll hear them disagreeing with Trump, rooted in Trump hatred. It’s personal; it’s visceral. But they can’t tell you what their actual policies are. They wouldn’t win a thing if they did. There just isn’t anything to suggest that campaigns without policies have any teeth in them.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, you might be asking (and it’d be a legitimate question), “If this district, Ohio 12, has been in Republican hands for 33, 35 years, then why in the same of Sam Hill is the Republican there running such a close race?” Well, that’s not hard to answer. There’s a disconnect between Republicans in Washington and Republican voters, and it’s not new. Now, it’s interesting that if you dig deep, you’ll find that the Republican Party professional consultant view of this race is tax cuts, that they gotta really hit tax cuts.

“Balderson has gotta talk about tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts!” But there’s also the issue of immigration. What is it that elevated Donald Trump the presidency? I mean, he talked about tax cuts. He talked about getting rid of Obamacare. He had a very coherent and very systemic agenda and message that he was very disciplined on. But it was led by immigration and the wall. That’s what got the Trump vote out. That’s what all the professionals in Washington missed. The professionals in Washington all want amnesty.

They all want open borders. They are convinced they’re going to get it. They think that you who do not want amnesty and want a wall are nutcases. You’re kooks! You need to be banned by Facebook too. You need to be banned by Twitter. All of you people who voted for Trump, you need to be banned. Every damn one of you needs to be banned. You’re standing in the way of what the establishment wants. It’s traditional. Republicans think economic issues have always — and they have.

Traditionally, economic issues have mattered. Republicans have owned the tax cut deal. Trump cut taxes tremendously and it’s had a dramatic effect on the economy. Why not talk about both? Why can’t both be part of the message? Why choose either/or? This stuff need not be that complicated. When you look… I was mentioning this yesterday. What do Democrats really have to run on? What is happening in America that would argue for anybody of sound mind voting for Democrats right now?

They’re nothing but pure, raw hatred. There isn’t a one of them that hasn’t been poisoned by it. They’re all sounding dangerously insane — I mean, dangerously insane — and the people, their supporters that they are encouraging to behave in violent, bullying, intimidating ways? What is there about that that a majority of Americans would vote for? The Democrats are banking on Trump hatred and that all of this bullying and violence and intimidating behavior is justified, that it is explainable by the fact that Trump is president.

That is statistically full employment, and most important is who is benefiting. The people hardest hit by the recession, the least educated American workers — those people who took the hardest hit in the Great Recession — are the ones experiencing the greatest rebound. All of this would argue for the Democrats being out of power for who knows how long. There isn’t a thing the Democrats offer that can top this. In truth, the Democrats — what they offer — will destroy all of this.

In an intellectual sense, it makes no sense to be voting Democrat right now, other than party loyalty that the standard-operating Democrat voters have. But I’m talking about independents, moderates, and so forth, it makes no sense to be voting Democrat today. Literally no sense whatsoever! Then you add the hatred and the fascism and the Stalinism that these people are becoming known for and it becomes even more apparent that they just cannot win power back on the basis of this.

If they start winning elections with this as their agenda, it’s only gonna get worse. If they win elections on the basis of getting rid of the First Amendment for some people — if they win elections on wiping out tax cuts and implementing tax increases, if they win elections on being able to bully your opponent into submission and getting ’em to run away and hide and not even vote — then it’s only gonna get worse when they actually get into office and start implementing their new agenda.

Why anybody would vote for this is mystifying, and people wouldn’t if they were properly informed by it. But, of course, the problem is the Drive-By Media’s not telling you this, who the Democrat Party is. They’re not telling you who the Trump opposition is. All they’re telling you is, “Trump’s bad. Trump’s dangerous. Trump’s a liar. Trump sucks. America sucks. Trump’s gotta go. Trump’s an embarrassment. People are embarrassed of Trump.” That’s all they’ve got.

That’s the only thing they’ve got. There’s only one counter-ballast to it, and that is voting for people that are gonna continue the Trump agenda. Here’s John Kasich, by the way, Sunday morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos straight from the Clinton war room. Question: “Did Troy Balderson…?” The Republican here in Ohio 12, did he “really tell you he was surprised that Trump was coming and that he didn’t want Trump to come?” Did he really tell you that, Governor Kasich?

KASICH: I asked him. I said, “Troy, why…? Did you invite Trump in here, the president?” He said, “No, I didn’t.” So, y’know, I think Donald Trump decides where he wants to go, and I think they think they’re firing up the base. But I have to tell you, at the same time he comes in here, I was with some women last night who said, “Hey, you know what? I’m not votin’.” They’re Republicans. “I’m not votin’ for the Republicans.” See, this is the problem the party has now.

RUSH: The problem the party has? Governor, with all due respect, it’s people like you! For crying out loud. Women look at Trump and see Trump as the problem? How can anybody look at any Democrat today and not see the real problem and a series of them facing the country? This is… This is really difficult for me to comprehend, because John Kasich is not stupid. Okay. So he’s telling us that Balderson didn’t really want Trump to come in, but when Trump wants to go someplace, you can’t stop him.

So, see, Trump’s a bully and Trump is selfish, and Trump’s only out for Trump. Trump came in and he did a great stump speech for this guy, Troy Balderson. Now here’s Kasich, “That’s not good! I was talking some women last night and women hate Trump and they’re not voting.” Well, let’s boil this down to something that is really totally irrelevant. So we’re back now to an age-old Republican dinosaur who still believes the War on Women is an effective ploy the Democrats use.

We’re losing women for whatever reason; here’s Kasich, “I was talking to some women. Yeah. I was with some women last night and she said, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m not voting,’ and they’re Republicans. ‘I’m not voting for the Republicans.'” He sounded happy about it. There’s no alternative here. Here’s Balderson, by the way. He was on CBS This Morning this morning during a report about the special election. Ed O’Keefe said, “Did the president coming on Saturday help you or hurt you?”

BALDERSON: Huge help. A lot of enthusiasm. We were around the district yesterday, and that was the total conversation.

RUSH: Total conversation. Trump came in. Of course it would ratchet up enthusiasm. Of course it would! You know, these rallies, we have some sound bites coming up. Cookie has done a very, very impressive thing today. I have been, in recent days, demonstrating my full knowledge of liberalism — who they are, what they believe, how they say it. She has done an A-B, side-by-side comparison of me predicting what Democrats are gonna say and think and do and then going out and finding Democrats who prove me 150% correct.

And one of the things — the Trump rallies. You know, the Democrats during the campaign, even the Republicans, during the campaign, the presidential campaign, they looked at those rallies, and they discarded them. They didn’t think they had anything to do with reality. You heard the old saw. “Well, you know, big crowds at campaign rallies doesn’t mean anything. You can’t transfer any meaning of a large sellout crowd for a candidate to mean anything on Election Day.” If we heard that once, we heard it twice.

Of course, here I am, you know, Mr. Nonprofessional Political Analyst just looking at things, and I’m seeing things I haven’t seen in political campaigns in much of my life. I’m seeing energy and crowds, overflowing crowds. I’m seeing people with more desire to be part of the political process than I’ve seen in I don’t know how long.

And the professionals in Washington are trying to tell me doesn’t matter. They’re trying to tell me, “You can’t gauge anything from those rallies.” And that’s what they were telling themselves. And because of that, they got shell shock surprised. Every bit of evidence that Donald Trump was gonna win that election was right in front of their face every day for over a year. And they systematically discarded it, they ignored it, they downplayed it, because it didn’t fit with the age-old political systems that they have developed.

Another one that went out the window was “he with the most money wins.” Trump didn’t have the most money. Jeb Bush did. Hillary did. There were so many ancient beliefs that got thrown out the window, tossed out. And even now they’re looking at Trump rallies, and they’re mocking them, they’re making fun of the people who are showing up. They are claiming that most people showing up are not really voters. They just got nothing else to do. “I mean, come on, Rush. It’s Lewis Center, Ohio, on a Saturday night. What else the hell you gonna do but go to a hundred degree gymnasium and listen to the president?”

Same argument, why do people join the military? ‘Cause they got nothing else to do. America is such a rotten country, it’s the only way they can get education is to offer their life in sacrifice. I get so sick and tired of the country being run down and ripped to shreds and the people who make it work be run down, ripped to shreds, impugned, and so forth.

But these rallies that Trump does, they’re no different than during the campaign. They’re drawing sellout crowds. There are people overflowing outside each of these venues. They set up screens for people who can’t get in. The enthusiasm is still there, and the Washington establishment, the Drive-By Media want to sit there in utter denial and tell themselves that what they’re looking at isn’t happening. And what they’re looking at doesn’t mean anything. No, they’ll go listen to John Kasich, who got how many delegates? And they’ll listen to him say, “Well, Trump coming in is not gonna help this guy. Trump coming in is gonna hurt this guy. I was talking to some women and they’re not voting. Yeah, I was talking to some women last night and they’re not voting. Trump coming in is hurting this guy.”

Meanwhile, the place is overflowing and there isn’t a politician in Ohio who could fill a venue like Trump can. But, meanwhile, he’s hurting people when he comes in. None of this makes any sense. Official Washington, establishment Washington, both parties, are still in complete, utter denial, and so are the pollsters and their models. So we shall just see.

By the way, the Democrat. Let’s be fair because fairness it our middle name here at the EIB Network. We have sound bite from Danny O’Connor today on the Today show. Garrett Haake was taking to him. “How much is President Trump on the ballot in your election?”

O’CONNOR: He’s not, and when I talk to folks, one thing I love to ask families is, I say, “What are you worried about? What keeps you up at night?” And it’s, “Is my Social Security gonna be cut? Is Medicare gonna be there for me?”

RUSH: Are you kidding me? Trump’s not on the ballot. I talked to people, they don’t care about Trump, is my Social Security gonna be cut? Are you reviving that one from the seventies? Is my Medicare gonna be cut? Who is talking about doing any of that?